Wow, according to this:
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Tourism/history-Great-Wall-3-defense.html
Over a million people died building the Great Wall of China, many falling into the ditches and being buried there. That would have been a good trivia question to ask.
If a million people died during the construction of The great Wall it was over 1800 years. ( approx 550 a year ) Moving large stone in ancient times was very dangerous. The construction pace was not so hurried that they could not stop to pull a person out of ditch, dead or alive. I saw a documentary of when the canal was being built in Soviet times to bring water to Moscow. The work boss was being interviewed and he was telling of how he was first given 2 years to complete a section of the canal, then he was later told that the time table has bee rolled back to 6 months. The 24 hr. a day hurried pace of pouring cement was so fierce that when people fell in with wheel barrels they could not stop to pull them out because of the difficulty of doing so, the backing up of lines of men with wheel barrels of cement and the loss of time to do so.